LAHORE, Dec 24: All members of the Punjab Assembly who marked their attendance on Tuesday for the session which was prorogued because of lack of quorum, without transacting any business, earned Rs16,800 each in allowances.

Those who did sign the attendance register but did not set foot in the session hall will also be entitled to an equal amount in allowances, official sources say.

Assuming that some 300 MPAs marked their attendance (in fact, they were more than 340), the exchequer has been robbed of Rs5 million.

The travelling expenditure to be paid to the legislators will be in addition to the amount they get in allowances. Its exact amount cannot be estimated because it varies in case of every MPA.

Some 400 employees of the Punjab Assembly Secretariat will also get allowances for a week. On an average, every employee gets Rs 70 per day. This means another burden of Rs 200,000.

The session had been requisitioned by opposition parties and they alone were responsible to maintain quorum to enable the house to carry out business.

Technically, these parties are responsible for causing such a huge loss to the exchequer as the nation has got nothing in return.

The ruling party deprived the opposition of an opportunity to create any problem for it by keeping its members out of the house, though they did mark their presence to get entitlement to allowances.

Official sources say that every member is entitled to six days’ allowances in addition to the number of days the house remains in session. Since the session lasted a single day, allowances will be for seven days.

An MPA gets Rs1,500 for accommodation and Rs 900 per day for local conveyance.

Travelling allowance permissible to every legislator varies according to the distance he has to cover to reach the assembly secretariat. The more the distance, the higher the allowance.

The “political mischief” made by the opposition by requisitioning the session, without being able to maintain quorum, gave the assembly staff entitlement for allowances for a week.

The expenditure the government had to make by deploying police and making other arrangements, is incalculable.

The sources said with the prorogation of the session, over three dozen adjournment motions on various subjects, three privilege motions, some half a dozen call attention notices and an equal number of resolutions lapsed.